YES, FAREWELL

A sounding board for the many climates of the mind, in the roster of a German castle's prisoners of war, from 1943 to the liberation. Twenty six year old Alan Maclaren is pivotal point as the days of his escape come closer, as with Tug and Brian he is successful in his break to liberty. He meets Russians, misses the Swiss border, is imprisoned in Munich as a spy. There friendship with the scholar Tomavich, a Serb, and Tug's death, clarify his directions, and returned to his original prison, he pursues his new course, spreads the idea of knowledge, of the brotherhood of man, and infects his fellow officers and men. With invasion and the prospect of freedom, he has his hopes. In the cynicism and scepticism, in the strengths and weaknesses of prison-enforced leisure, this is a detailed recording of the individual developments of a group, of an individual. Overlong, over-pursued as an idea, this concentrates on mental rather than physical gymnastics.